Mon, Mar 10, 2008
Pigs' heads are dumped under cover of darkness by persons unknown, but the intent is clear: no Islamic school for this neighbourhood. At rowdy public rallies against the school, traffic and planning concerns are drowned out by anti-Muslim tirades amid choruses of " Aussie Aussie Aussie, oi oi oi. "
Mon, Mar 24, 2008
Alan Johnston had just a couple of weeks to go before flying home after three years working for the BBC in Gaza. As he left his office and nosed his car into the mid-afternoon traffic, he was suddenly blocked and surrounded by gunmen. Hooded and handcuffed, he was driven to some unknown apartment and left in an empty room.
Thu, Apr 17, 2008
In modern China, baby girls can be sold for as little as $500. Boys cost $1000-plus. This documentary, made for Channel 4 and HBO, intimately reveals the depth of this tragedy and explores the connection between child trafficking, an alarming shortage of girls and the country's stringent birth control policy.
Mon, Jun 2, 2008
One spring evening in 2005, Brett Kebble, a young mining magnate who had lived a life in the fast lane, drove off to a dinner appointment in the suburbs of Johannesburg. On the way he stopped and opened his window, inexplicably in the crime-ridden city, and was shot seven times at close range.
Mon, Aug 4, 2008
The harbour where Sir John Franklin and his crew spent their first winter after they arrived at the entrance to the fabled Northwest Passage is a truly godforsaken place. And despite claims they brought with them 1,000 books, 17,000 litres of alcohol and three years' food supply, it is difficult to imagine spending one night on Beechey Island let alone the dark Arctic winter.
Mon, Sep 15, 2008
They stand pristine and empty, cocooned in a silence broken intermittently by the roar of low-flying fighter jets. Woomera and Baxter detention centres, pitched in desert to confine thousands of people from across the seas, have outlived their idea. They exist as harsh monuments to history - with powerful stories to tell.
Mon, Nov 10, 2008
A few days ago Kevin Rudd and Paul Keating skirmished over Gallipoli's place at the epicentre of the national psyche. Keating dismissed it as a faraway European affair, the spilt Australian blood testament to the country's lack of self-esteem. But Gallipoli, countered Rudd, was an act of courage that shaped national identity for a century.